


Saginou

by uumuu



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Coping, Frottage, M/M, Music, Musical Instruments, Post-Canon, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-08
Updated: 2015-11-08
Packaged: 2018-04-30 07:45:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5155847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uumuu/pseuds/uumuu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maglor comes upon Daeron during his wandering.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Saginou

**Author's Note:**

  * For [amyfortuna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amyfortuna/gifts).



It was the voice which led him to where the other was, on a night when the light of the near-full moon and the crashing waves in the distance ushered his every step. He had grown used to the quiet, to have only earth and sky and sea as comrades and witnesses to his wandering, to _pretend_ that it had always been so. 

The voice rose in a soulful song, wafting gently through air. Maglor was at once filled by a nostalgic yearning. He stopped walking. He had heard the same song, centuries before, at a time of mirth and hope, he had accompanied it by plucking silvery notes on a gold-gilded harp that now lay buried alongside ruins and corpses under the sea. 

Locating the source of the voice was a diversion as any. He climbed down the hill, leaving the sea view behind, crossed a narrow brook and the thicket beyond it, until he emerged on a gently sloping meadow. The voice seemed to come from every direction there, and he had to close his eyes to pinpoint where it came from exactly. At the end of his trek, he came upon a man huddling next to a nearly extinguished campfire, which he poked listlessly with a short stick. 

The song went on, and Maglor let it wash over him like refreshing sprays from a waterfall, breathed it in like air. A small smile flickered across his face as he eased the large bundle that held all his remaining possessions off his shoulders, and set it down next to a boulder. He stood completely still, enraptured, until the voice began drop. 

As it faded, he clapped his hands once.

The man stopped singing abruptly and whirled around towards him. 

“Daeron,” Maglor said.

Recognition flashed terrible in Daeron's eyes after but an instant, and with the same virulence with which it gripped him, he seized a rock and flung it at Maglor. 

Maglor deflected it with his sturdy walking stick, and was prepared when Daeron lunged at him. It wasn't really the reception he had been hoping for, but it wasn't unexpected – or unwarranted – either. Daeron was taller, but didn't have as much combat experience as Maglor and was too angry, too confused to be effective. After some shuffling around, Maglor managed to pin him down with his right hand, twisting Daeron's right arm behind his back, while he unsheathed the dagger which hung from his belt with his left and brought it to Daeron's neck.

“If your wish is death, I can accomodate you right now,” he said.

Daeron thrashed under him, his hair dishevelled and his breath ragged. “You should die!”

“Sorry, if I had wanted to die I would have committed suicide already. But alas, my attachment to life is greater than any grief.”

Daeron cursed under his breath, attempted to free himself again, but finally gave up with a grunt and went limp.

Maglor let him go. He climbed to his feet, sheathed the dagger and walked back to where his baggage lay. Daeron sat next to the fire again, massaging his right wrist. 

“How did you find me?” he asked, scowling at the other. 

“It was a coincidence, really. I heard your voice,” Maglor replied, untying an oblong wrapping of battered but still sheeny silk from the top of his baggage. “It sounded far more charming than the waves. It seemed almost to lure me. Have you been alone all these years?”

Daeron didn't reply. He held Maglor's gaze for a few moments longer, then retrieved his stick, but instead of using it to stoke the dying flames he disgruntledly tossed it among them.

Maglor unwrapped the silk, revealing a small lute with a flat, distinctly pear-shaped body and a long but rather thin, fretless neck accommodating three strings.

Daeron couldn't help eyeing the instrument curiously – he had never seen any such before. He had not seen _any_ musical instrument in a long long time. Sometimes he had thought of making one – had started it, chopping up the wood, shaping it and polishing it. But those carefully prepared pieces had always ended in the fire, because it didn't make sense to play only for himself, and he felt he didn't have the right to make music any longer. 

It galled him therefore immensely that Maglor, on top of intruding all of a sudden on the haven of solitude he had cut out for himself guided by the only song he still allowed himself to sing, also seemed to be completely at ease with his condition.

“How can you be so...insouciant?”

“How should I be?” Maglor said, without looking at him, his fingers busy with the tuning of his instrument. 

“At least _pretend_ to be remorseful.”

“You were the one who told me, at Mereth Aderthad, that I'm a self-centered bastard.” Maglor raised his head and winked at him in a display of familiarity that further irked Daeron, but which he recognised. They _had_ spent a lot of time together at Mereth Aderthad, playing and singing, swapping melodies and words. “At least I don't sit around listlessly, evidently too lackadaisical for anything else.”

“I am not,” Daeron countered.

Maglor smiled roguishly and Daeron looked away – for a moment. He was soon peeking again at how Maglor positioned his hands on the instrument, and began playing, the fingers of his right hand not quite plucking or strumming the strings but stroking and hitting them vigorously while the fingers of his left hand slid up and down the length of the neck. 

The song was a vivacious one, fast, full of energy and _life_. 

Daeron soon became oblivious to everything else – the landscape around him as well as his irritation – and immersed himself in the music, the beauty and sparkle of it, its peculiarity. The very style of composition was unusual, unlike the one Maglor had elaborated on with a great abundance of enthusiasm and details centuries before. Daeron's fingertips curled against the palm of his hands. He felt the urge to play, pluck those strings, the urge to just _touch_. 

“It feels good to play for an audience again,” Maglor said once had finished, looking up from the instrument to find Daeron staring at him. “You liked that?”

Daeron started at being abruptly brought back to reality. He scoffed and turned his back on Maglor, picking up his mantle to wrap himself in it for the night. 

“Do you mind if I sing while you fall asleep?” Maglor asked, as Daeron pulled the mantle tight about himself and lay down, with his back to Maglor and a tuft of grass for pillow. 

Once again he didn't reply. He doubted Maglor would have refrained from singing even if he had told him not to, and he didn't want to talk to him. He closed his eyes, pretending to fall asleep. As expected, Maglor began singing, and sleep eluded Daeron so long as he did. 

*

When Daeron woke up the next day, it was already midday – he rarely slept that late – and Maglor was nowhere to be seen. So was his baggage, therefore Daeron simply assumed he had left, though it seemed odd to him a stubborn _Gold_ would have the grace to be so unobtrusive. Not that he minded. He sat up, rubbing drowsiness from his face. He could put the night's unexpected encounter behind, and go on like he had since he had left Doriath. He gathered his own scant possessions and destroyed the campfire, erasing every trace of his presence in the clearing. He hastily left, in case Maglor were to return.

He had already walked a good distance from the clearing, picking his way through the forest that lay between the sea and the hills, when the sound of light footfalls crept up behind him, growing steadily bigger. Soon Maglor was walking right next to him. 

“Why are you following me?” he asked, looking straight in front of him, though the temptation to turn and look at Maglor was like a physical itch.

Maglor shrugged. “I have nothing else to do, nowhere to go.”

“If you don't want to die, stop following me.”

“I told you, you're the one who's set to die if you try to kill me,” Maglor jauntily said, the sound of it almost a laugh. “But I don't think you want to die, either.”

They walked without speaking a further word the whole day long. Daeron never properly tried to leave Maglor behind, but he pressed on without even stopping for food or drink, until finally dusk fell and they were forced to halt just out of the forest for the night.

Maglor was the one to build a campfire. His fingers, Daeron noted, were covered in small scars, no doubt from battle. His knuckles were raw, his skin wind-burnt. They were the hands of someone no longer had any luxury to rely on, like himself. 

As soon as the fire was crackling cheerfully, Maglor untied the two hares he had hunted before he started trailing Daeron again from his baggage and set about skinning them. They roasted them and ate them to the sound of the crackling fire and wolf-howls in the distance. After they had finished, Maglor played his strange lute again, then lay down for the night. Daeron did too, but didn't even pretend to try to sleep. 

He lay awake, staring up at the sky. The moon was full that night, the air pleasant. The moonlight enhanced the stars' refulgence, one greater than the others (Maglor had pointedly refused to look at the sky as evening fell). Melian had called that sort of brilliance _istil_. At Mereth Aderthad, Maglor had told him the word was derived from the same root as the word síla, as the word silmaril. He had taught Maglor how to write it in cirth. 

He turned his head. Maglor's profile was sharp against the moonlight. Daeron crawled out from under his mantle, and rose. He crossed to the other side of the campfire. He stood next to Maglor's sleeping form, and studied it intently for a while. Maglor slept seemingly deeply, his mantle just draped over him. Daeron pulled it away and straddled Maglor's hips, careful not to let his thighs touch Maglor's sides. 

He knelt immobile, looking down at the Noldo. Maglor's curly hair had mostly escaped from his ponytail and was half fanned above his head, half trapped under his back. His left arm was folded up next to his face, the right close to his belt, ready for attack even in sleep. After a time, Daeron took a deep breath and lowered his right hand to Maglor's belly, laid the palm over it, and pressed. Maglor didn't stir. Daeron's hand trembled. He realised the risk, but the impulse to touch and feel was too strong. He tugged Maglor's shirt out of his trousers, and swiftly slipped his hand under both shirt and undershirt.

The sensation of another's flesh - warm, firm, pulsating - was staggering. He snuck his other hand under Maglor's clothing too, spreading both over Maglor's belly, glided them towards his sides, and up, up, getting close to Maglor's nipples, so that more and more skin became exposed to his eyes. He avidly caressed it, trailed his fingertips back down over lithe muscles, lightly scratched it.

When he looked up again, Maglor's eyes were open and staring at him.

“Go on,” he said, with no hint of offence or annoyance in his voice. “I don't mind.”

Daeron did away with any pretence at reluctance. Without breaking eye contact, he tugged on the single string that held Maglor's trousers in place. It came undone easily, and just as easily the trousers slid from Maglor's waist when he pulled them down (Daeron at once realised they had probably not been Maglor's at first). Maglor's cock was flaccid, but Daeron soon felt it stir in his hand. He fondled it, stroking his hand up and down its length until it was hard and wetness pearled on the head. He pulled his own cock out, already more than half-hard. The next moment he was grinding them together, rolling his hips eagerly. His thighs were now clenched around Maglor's body. His breathing quickened, and the ecstasy of pleasure crept under his very skin.

His hand opened to curl around both their cocks, and a after a while Maglor's right hand rose to cover his own. A traitor's hand sustained by a kinslayer's, as they found desperate pleasure together.

Maglor smiled sweetly up at him, his eyes growing unfocused the longer their cocks slid against each other, the longer Daeron's fingers stroked them. 

The movement of Daeron's hips became frantic. He closed his eyes, blocking the sight of Maglor's face as well as moonlight and starlight, focusing only on tactile sensation. After a time Maglor's hand dropped to cup his balls, and it was his undoing. His seed spilled onto Maglor's shirt, Maglor's followed suit.

Daeron slumped down, his ass resting on Maglor's thighs, wide-eyed and almost incredulous that it had taken so little to break him out of the listless half life he had chosen for himself, and all of a sudden, after he had spent decades shunning others' company as well he could. He rolled off of Maglor, and sat down next to him. 

“You deserve to be alone more than I do,” he softly said, wiping the sweat away from his forehead.

“That is true, I guess,” Maglor said, sitting up. He slipped his fingers through the come on his chest before it dried and cleaned them in the grass at his feet. “At least I never betrayed the person I loved.”

“Because you never loved anybody apart from yourself and your damned brothers and father.”

“That too is true, I guess,” Maglor said, but a little less detached. He picked up his lute again and played. The song was less fast, but still lively-sounding. Daeron just listened, hanging his head, basking in the music until it ended.

“Does that have a title?” he asked as Maglor laid his palm over the strings to stop their vibrations.

“It's called 'Lament'.”

Daeron frowned, his gaze shifting to Maglor's face. “Lament? It doesn't sound like a lament.”

“It's a mannish composition. Men have a rather more dynamic view of mourning,” Maglor explained. “It's normally played with four instruments, different from this one, with a neck as thin, but longer and with frets, and a very rounded body.” Maglor's fingers slid around the body of the instrument, holding it as it were a living creature. “Musical instruments...the bigger ones...are the thing I miss the most.”

“I thought you might miss your family,” Daeron taunted.

“I said _thing_.”

“You don't -”

“Dairon,” Maglor cut him short, using the real form of his name, a grim sorrow darkening his eyes, “...is there anything worse than missing people you love, people you know you'll never meet again?”

“...No,” Daeron replied, in a barely audible whisper. 

“That's why I keep moving. It helps me think less.”

Maglor slipped his fingers into position, and started playing again.

**Author's Note:**

> Gold is the Doriathrin form of Noldo.


End file.
